Not a fan of F1’s new qualifying rules? Tough

We were told that Formula One teams and promoters were listening to the fans.

But despite a universal dislike of the new Formula One qualifying rules and an embarrassing failure of them in Australia, they will continue unchanged in Bahrain.

Even before the race had taken place in Australia, the teams announced that Formula One would revert back to the 2015 regulations for qualifying for the second race of 2016.

The new elimination style qualifying had been renownedly trounced by just about everybody.

However, Force India, Pirelli and the FIA had other ideas and whilst Force India were happy to not rock the boat, Pirelli and the FIA instead offered the teams a tweak to the new elimination format.

Their idea was to create an alternative plan which would see amendments to the elimination process.

Q1 and Q2 could see the eliminations remain, but with extended periods before the knock-outs, enabling teams and drivers the chance to respond to the chance of elimination instead of having no time to react.

Whilst Q3 would revert back to the old rules, giving fans a true pole position shoot-out.

Pirelli believed the elimination style qualifying did have an impact on the race due to the tyres used by the teams to avoid dropping down the grid, a switch back to the old rules would enable teams to be more conservative on their tyre choices during qualifying, enabling them to maximise tyre strategy during the race.

‘I think the one thing that did come from qualifying here was that it had an impact on the race, which was the original motive as explained to us as F1 Commission members.’ Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery told motorsport.com.

Due to this dispute, and as is often the case in Formula One, as unanimous approval could not be found then no changes were made.

It turns out, the option to revert back to 2015 qualifying regulations was not even put to the teams to be ratified by the F1 Commission and World Motor Sport Council, instead they were only offered a vote on a amended elimination style qualifying format.

According to motorsport.com both McLaren Honda and Red Bull Racing refused to back the new plan, so nothing changes for Bahrain.